by Tom Drury
“My stepfather worked for Rugg Molasses in Morrisville,” Tiny wrote. “This was when Rugg took up that whole lot to the south and actually manufactured molasses. Now I believe that there is just research left there, because the molasses smell has almost completely gone away. One day they called in my stepfather and fired him from his job. He had been a Rugg man eleven years and was therefore disappointed at this turn of events. He was not one to sit and think of his troubles so he hunted a lot after being fired. He would walk down the railroad tracks smoking a cigarette and in late afternoon he would come home. He always got something, whether it be rabbit, pheasant, possum, squirrel, etc. One winter afternoon my sister Bebe and I were sitting and watching television when my stepfather came home from his hunting and asked us to come outside. He had killed two squirrels and set them up on the hood of his car with their backs to the windshield and he had lit two cigarettes and put them in the squirrels’ mouths. He asked us if we had ever seen animals smoking before and we replied that we had not. There was smoke coming from the cigarettes which is a mystery to this day. Then he approached the squirrels and pretended to carry on a conversation with them, arguing as to the reasons why he should not be fired from his job. I caught on to this but Bebe did not and she began crying. I told Bebe that he was playing a game. She still did not understand and continued crying and then ran into the house.”
Bettina Sullivan may have read this, but she never mentioned the childhood defense again. She said she wanted to talk about a plea bargain. “What do I mean when I use this term ‘plea bargain’? Think of a bargain in a store. It’s similar but different …”
She probably would not care that Tiny had left town, and might even be relieved. She public-defended in three counties, and every time Tiny saw her, he had to refresh her memory of the charge against him, which seemed to emphasize his guilt in a gloomy way. She was very busy and also coached youth soccer, which Tiny knew because he had found the rules of soccer in her briefcase.
Tiny drove south and west, crossing seven counties, and by dark he was westbound on Interstate 80. His car was beat up but picturesque—a Pontiac Parisienne, metal-flake green, with mag wheels and lake pipes. The fan did not work, but at highway speeds air rushed in at the car’s every seam. The windshield wipers worked, and sometimes they worked on their own, as if detecting a fine mist beyond Tiny’s perception. A crack had climbed the left side of the windshield like a leafless tree.
It was cold in the speeding car, and Tiny thought back to the night, coming up on a year ago, when Louise had asked him to leave the old farmhouse. Her car had broken down, and she had walked home a mile and a half in eight-degree weather. When she came in, Tiny was trying to assemble a shiny kerosene heater he had stolen from the Stone City Cashway. It is beyond doubt that he failed to notice how cold her hands and feet were. She turned on the broiler of the stove and flopped down on the floor. She peeled off her boots and socks, opened the broiler door, rubbed her toes in the heat. She was crying softly. It turned out she had suffered the first phase of frostbite and this was the pain of reawakening tissue.
“Do you want some Kleenex?” said Tiny.
“I want a separation,” she said.
Now on the radio Tiny picked up a preacher with his own translation of the Bible. Father Zene Hebert was his name, and he had a deep voice that issued great rolls of static when he pronounced the sounds sss or ch. Father Hebert thought we were witnessing the final minutes of our pleasant day on earth. Tiny sat forward, kneading the wheel. This kind of stuff always excited him. Father Hebert said the Roman Empire represented suppertime, and the eternal clock was now poised on midnight.
Tiny watched a televised hockey game in a dark tavern in Plain Park, Nebraska. He sat at the bar drinking shots and beers. The hockey was live from somewhere and, with last call looming, seemed like a miracle of light and motion. There were three other people in the bar: a bartender, a waitress, and a small man reading a paperback book by Robert Heinlein. The waitress had completed her chores and sat at an empty table eating spaghetti. She had brown hair. If you saw her across a wide street or highway, you might mistake her for Louise.
Tiny went over and sat down. “Would you like to ride around with me and listen to some cassette tapes?” he said. “I have Bad Company, Paul Simon, Ten Years After, and a lot more under the seat.”
She displayed the back of her hand. “See this?” she said. “It’s a pearl. It means engaged to be engaged. It’s funny you should mention Paul Simon. My boyfriend is Ron Schultz, of the band Vodka River. I am pearled to Ron Schultz. Vodka River plays all around here, and one of their songs is ‘The Boxer.’”
“I should know that,” said Tiny.
“It’s the one that goes ‘lie-la-lie,’” said the woman.
“Oh, yeah,” said Tiny, with no idea what she was talking about. He took out a small black comb and ran it through his hair. His free hand followed, smoothing. “I like a woman of your size,” he said.
“That’s too bad, because, as I say, I’m pearled,” said the waitress. “But it is flattering, and one thing I can do is give you free passes to see Vodka River tomorrow night at the Club Car.”
“I am here tonight,” said Tiny. He took her hand.
She pulled her hand away. “That’s too bad, because Vodka River was named one of the top ten bar bands in Eastern Nebraska. You could go to the Club Car now, but I’m afraid their set is probably winding down. Ron is the drummer. He sings lead on ‘Please Come to Boston’ and ‘I Shot the Sheriff.’ Now I’m sorry, but I have to go back to work. Being pearled is not the same as being engaged, but I’m not going to threaten what I have with Ron.” She brushed her lips with a napkin and stood. “You can have my garlic bread if you want.”
“Thanks,” said Tiny.
The lights came up. The waitress took her dishes to the kitchen, and the man with the Heinlein book came over and sat down. He was pale and straw-haired, and wore a sweatshirt from Storybook Gardens in Wisconsin. His name was Mike, and he claimed to be the distributor in this area for a self-help program called Lunarhythm. Tiny wondered if Mike approached every stranger or just those who seemed to need self-help.
“I’ll start a sentence and you finish it,” said Mike. “‘I don’t mean to complain, but—’”
“I get headaches sometimes.”
“Good. ‘If there was one thing I could change about myself—’”
“I would go ahead and do it.”
“‘I wish I were an eagle, with—’—
“‘With’? What do you mean?”
“There is no right or wrong answer. ‘I wish I were an eagle, with—’”
“Deadly claws.”
“Sure. ‘Deadly claws’ is fine. Why not… ‘I don’t consider myself a loser, and yet—’”
“I have lost things.”
“There, that was pretty easy,” said Mike. “Your answers suggest that you would in fact benefit from the Lunarhythm Plan. I mean, everyone does, but you would especially. You’re what we call ‘predisposed.’ This is a program of self-hypnosis administered according to the thirteen-month calendar of the ancient Sumerians. Why thirteen months? Isn’t that a needless complication? Well, not really, and I’ll tell you why—”
“Give it up, Mike,” said the waitress, while zipping a black and red Plain Park Trojans letter-jacket. “Did you tell him it costs six hundred dollars? It does, it costs six hundred dollars for these pathetic index cards.”
“That’s your opinion, Brenda,” said Mike.
“I don’t have six hundred dollars,” said Tiny.
Mike’s forehead dropped into his palms. “Oh, there’s a payment plan,” he said wearily. “But thank you, Brenda. Thank you for wrecking everything. I don’t know what I did to deserve you for a sister. It must have been really bad.”
“Well, the whole thing is stupid,” said Brenda. She lit a cigarette and gave Mike one. “Come on, Michael. Those Lunarhythm people don’t care about you. You’re simply a
pawn in their game. You’ve got to get a job. I told you that, Mama told you that, Daddy told you that. We’ve all told you until we’re sick of talking.”
Tiny called Louise on a phone in the corridor by the bathrooms. There was no answer, so he tried the sheriff’s place. Dan Norman accepted the charges, which surprised him.
“Put Louise on.”
“Louise is asleep,” said Dan Norman. “You’d better call back at a decent hour. And let me give you a word of advice. Hold on. Here she is.”
“Yeah? What, Tiny?”
“Put Louise on the line.”
“This is Louise.”
“Louise?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t forget the good side.”
“I won’t. Goodbye.”
“The good side, the fun times.”
“I’ll try not. Goodbye now.”
Tiny shifted the phone to his other ear. “Remember going across the lake in that paddleboat thing? Remember how you thought we were going over the dam? You really laughed. You have to admit that you laughed that time we were at the lake.”
“I may have, Tiny. I don’t remember every moment in my life and whether I laughed or not. If you say I did, it’s possible.”
“Then one of the pedals broke. What a disaster.”
“Tiny, I have to get up in the morning.”
“I’m going to see June.”
“For what?”
“I’m already in Nebraska.”
“Don’t go to June’s, for God’s sakes. June is married. They don’t want to see you.”
“By the way, could you give me their phone number?”
“You’ll just make a fool of yourself.”
“Then at least you would be happy.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“What’s it like, fucking a robot? Does he take much oil?” But she had hung up.
The parking lot was as bright as any day. A man with a twitching eye sat in the back of a van with the doors open. “You look like someone who could use a cup of coffee for the road,” he said. “Better yet, how about a hundred cups of coffee? Or a thousand?”
Tiny bought some speed from the man and glided the Parisienne back onto the highway. His anger left him, replaced by an expanding, chemical patience. Seeing in the rear-view mirror eighteen or twenty trucks bearing down on him, for instance, he showed no concern but only said, “Here come the semis.”
The trucks passed the Parisienne like great ships on water. Many truckers who drive Interstate 80 take pride in their running lights. Strings of yellow and blue score the trailers as if square dances are taking place inside. And the cabs resemble ticket booths, strung with orange beads. Even some mud flaps are electric. Once, on a slight grade, the highway widened to add a slow lane, and trucks appeared on all sides of Tiny, and he seemed to be traveling through a canyon of light. This did not last. The illumination faded and disappeared, like a blinking code, and Tiny drove alone. Then a first-time caller on the radio said that Father Zene Hebert was a fraud. Hebert was not ordained and wouldn’t know a biblical scroll if it hit him on the head. His real name was Herbert Bland or Herbert Grand. He was under indictment in Florida. A lamp by a bridge flared and darkened as Tiny passed. This kind of thing had been happening for years, and Tiny wondered if something in his body chemistry was putting out the lights.
His car broke down the next morning. It was fortunate in a way, because Tiny was falling asleep, suffering from road rapture. For miles, the things beyond his windshield—cars, bridges, culverts, farms, fences, mile markers—had been fusing into the image of a face. The stillness scared him. It meant his eyes were no longer seeing the movement of objects. It meant he was asleep.
He tried several ways to keep awake. He rolled down the window, smoked, and left the interstate, hoping that ditches, crossings, and two-way traffic would force him to be alert. But the state highway was empty, and the face came back. He tried to sing with the radio, but could not remember the words. Then the radio faded out. Tiny turned on the overhead light, and the car went into a stall. The problem was electrical.
Soon the Parisienne rolled to a stop, its alternator belt broken and gone. Tiny pulled the battery and began to walk. When a car came by, which was not often, he would turn and put out his thumb. He carried the battery under his arm and was reminded of happy times walking to school with a lunchbox, or taking the lunchboxes of other children. He looked at cattle, who looked at him. He mused about the possibility of retrieving a Camaro mounted on a pole to advertise a dealership in a place called Euclid. Nebraska seemed flat and intimate. He found one battered white ballet slipper on the shoulder and turned it over and over in his hands. Eventually an old pickup stopped. It was red, with a camper top, many dents, and decals on the back for the Everglades, the Keys, the Falls, and the Dells.
The driver of the truck was a sunburned, overweight woman named Marie Person. She was in her sixties and drove leaning forward, forearms curved to the wheel, shoulders gently rolling in a red-and-white-checked shirt. Marie was one of those eccentrics who travel the lonely highways of monotonous states and almost seem to have been hired by the tourism department to enliven the traveler’s experience. These people have certain things in common. Often they hold a patent, or have applied for one but are being blocked by lawyers, or have some other reason to correspond frequently with Washington, D.C. Sometimes the stamped and addressed letters ride beside them, fanned out on the car seat, which is usually a bench and not a bucket. They travel at midday or late at night. They cross desolate stretches for vague and shifting reasons that often have to do with animals. They need a vaccine for Skip the pony or special food for Rufus the cat to get his urine flowing again. They are going to look at a calf in Elko named Dream Weaver or Son of Helen’s Song. They know everyone in the low-roofed diners along the way, but no one seems to know them. This they account for by giving the details of some unpopular stand they have taken that made everyone furious but was after all the right thing to do. Their surnames are not traceable to other surnames you have heard.
Tiny felt comfortable with Marie Person. She was round and pleasant. Grapes rolled on the floor of her truck. Her story was colorful but did not demand much concentration. She had started out as a midwife in the Northwest Territory and had learned to fly. Look magazine sent a man to do a story on her, but he broke his leg on the ice and went back, and though she called a number of times, no one else came. Her husband, who’d taught her to fly, crashed his plane and died. Or maybe it was the man from Look magazine who died in the plane crash. Tiny wasn’t listening that closely. Anyway, Marie moved down here and had eleven children with a lawyer named Kenneth Strong. She lowered both visors to show the school pictures of her children. She gave their names but seemed to repeat herself. The pictures were old, the colors no longer right.
“Do you have any children, sir?” she said.
Tiny shook his head. “We went to the doctor a couple years back. It seems my sperm count wasn’t up to par.”
“Ohh,” said Marie. “What will you build your life around?”
“We won’t,” said Tiny. “We’re divorced.”
“I’m sorry,” said Marie Person, patting his hand.
“Talk to the county sheriff,” said Tiny.
“Why?” said Marie.
“She lives with him.”
“That must sting.”
“I can tell you exactly when it fell apart,” said Tiny. “One time I said to her that nine out of ten men become police because they’re afraid they can’t satisfy a woman in the bed. And she goes, ‘Where’d you hear that?’ It was very obvious. So I went out and got half in the bag, and when I came home she was asleep. ‘Wake up,’ I said. ‘We have to talk.’ See, because I wanted to talk to her. She was the one that didn’t want to talk. I wanted to talk. So anyway, I gave a pull on the bedclothes, and evidently I was kind of worked up, because she fell out of bed. That I regret; that wasn’t fair.”
“No lady
likes a violent man,” said Marie.
She bought Tiny lunch at the Stuckey’s outside Lesoka, Colorado. She handed him a napkin and said, “Here’s your napkin.” Afterward, she brought out a pack of Winstons.
“You want a child, here’s what you do,” she said. “Take two tomato plants to the Catholic church and sprinkle them with holy water. Then plant them somewhere with rain and lots of sunshine. When one tomato has ripened from each plant, take both tomatoes to the one you love as a gift.”
“I don’t believe in that stuff,” said Tiny.
Marie shrugged. “Yeah, it is kind of stupid. I’m going to the ladies’ room.”
Tiny finished his meal and had a cigarette. Then he had another cigarette. He savored the smoke, for there was no hurry. Marie was gone. He had seen her truck leaving. He wished that he had kept his battery with him.
Tiny walked on into Lesoka, which rhymes with Jessica, and took a room in a threadbare hotel near the railroad tracks. There was a candy machine in the lobby, featuring dusty and discontinued brands of licorice. Tiny lay down on a narrow bed with a thin white bedspread. He could not sleep. A train went by. Tiny counted the silhouettes of cats on Chessie boxcars. He turned the dial of the bedside radio until he found his friend Father Zene Hebert. The father was explaining that people will be allowed to bring clothing to Heaven. “The verse should read, ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions, each with a cabinet for thy garments.’” Tiny shut off the radio. He took a bath and went down to the street.
That evening he visited all the bars on Railroad Street in Lesoka—the Alley, the Lion’s Tooth, the Golden Spike, Kato’s Korner. He drank shots of Scotch whiskey until his eyes glowed, until his knees buckled, until his features blurred in the mirror. He stumbled from one bar to the next, pissing in doorways and on the Yosemite Sam mudflaps of a Silverado pickup. He got the impression that no one in Lesoka danced, and hauled likely couples before jukeboxes and forcibly manipulated their arms and legs to the songs of Suzanne Vega, Sly and the Family Stone, Carole King. His mighty finger crushed the buttons of his selections. He sprained the arm of a man named Jim. In turn, he was thrown into the alley behind the Alley.